PORT ANGELES — A woman tearfully described a romantic relationship that spiraled out of control at the trial of a Sedro-Woolley man who allegedly sent her abusive text messages, left threatening voice mails and set her Beaver-area house on fire on New Year’s Day 2016 while she was in Florida.
Marshall Jay Lewis, a 38-year-old registered sex offender, was in the third day of Clallam County Superior Court proceedings before Judge Brian Coughenour on Wednesday.
Lewis is in the Clallam County jail on $125,000 bail on charges of first-degree arson, residential burglary, telephone harassment, cyberstalking and disclosing intimate images that he allegedly posted on a pornographic website — all felonies with domestic violence enhancements.
Authorities dropped a charge of voyeurism against Lewis, who has had 11 trial continuances and is the longest serving inmate at the jail. He has been incarcerated more than two years after his arrest in mid-January 2016.
The trial, which began Monday, is expected to last at least through this coming Tuesday, by which time Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Steven Johnson said he is expected to finish calling witnesses, of which 26 have been called to testify.
The woman, whose age was unavailable and whose daughter lives with her, said she and Lewis were in a “significant dating relationship” from the end of 2014 to mid-2015.
She broke up with him in mid-2015 after learning that he is a registered sex offender, according to court records.
Lewis was convicted of third-degree rape in Snohomish County in 2010.
The woman testified Wednesday that she and Lewis were acquaintances as Forks High School students and reconnected as adults on Facebook in 2014 after he initiated contact with her and had moved to Sedro Woolley.
She said they became “pretty serious,” bonding over common interests.
Both were going through divorces, she said.
“At that point, it was great,” she said of her relationship with Lewis. “He seemed very caring. He seemed very easy to talk to.”
As a single mother, she said, “it made me feel good, because I was at the point in my life where I was feeling very alone.”
Their relationship began deteriorating after Lewis began inflicting “pretty intense verbal abuse, mental abuse,” criticizing her makeup and calling her vulgar names, she said.
Around May or June 2015, he told her he was moving to La Push, where he said he would be working as a chef.
Lewis had said he wanted to move in with her and her daughter.
“I was very taken aback when he announced this to me,” she told the jury.
“I was like, ‘Oh, God, you know, it just seemed too close for comfort.”
He moved to La Push, but the relationship “basically fizzled,” she recalled, ending by mutual agreement over summer 2015.
Lewis left the Olympic Peninsula in August 2015 but kept texting and asking her to go to Seattle, seeming to want more contact with her after he left, she said.
She blocked him on Facebook and ignored him.
“I feel like he was getting angry because I wouldn’t agree to got to the Lynnwood area to hang out with him and stuff,” she said.
“I was getting more and more afraid.”
After she went to Florida around Christmas 2015, his text messages and voice mails became increasingly hostile, she said.
She said he suggested coming to Forks and “passing me around” to his friends and him.
He said he would pay her $400, she said, crying on the stand.
“The text messages continued even after [the woman] responded, “No. Leave me alone,” according to court records.
On New Year’s Eve day, she called 9-1-1 to say she had been receiving harassing, sexually derogatory text messages and that she was “concerned Marshall may burn down or vandalize her house,” according to a Sheriff’s Office deputy’s report.
Phone records show he called her 38 times between 2:55 a.m. and 6:11 a.m. Jan. 1. The records show that the phone calls were from Beaver. Marshall told authorities later he was her house.
A fire was reported at the woman’s house at 9:14 a.m. New Year’s Day by a motorist on U.S. Highway 101 who saw smoke coming from the residence, which had the front door open and the door window broken.
A fire-damaged gas can was discovered on top of what looked like a heating-ventilation unit next to the house, according to a photograph viewed by the jury.
Lewis later told authorities he created a pornographic website in her name with the woman’s images, admitted to soliciting website viewers to contact her, and to being at the woman’s house at 9 a.m. the morning of the fire.
He denied setting the fire.
When the woman returned to her house Jan. 3, “it was just horrific,” she told the jury.
“It was just like there was a hurricane in the house, and everything was black.
“It looked like death.”
Lewis’ attorney, Harry Gasnick of Clallam Public Defender, cross-examined the woman for 15 minutes.
He focused on her confusing Pacific Standard Time and Eastern Standard Time for when she said Lewis contacted her.
He also said she was aware that her car was not at her residence when Lewis texted her to say he was at her house and that “we see your car.”
Gasnick told her, ““You knew no one was at your house.”
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 55650, or at pgottlieb@ peninsuladailynews.com.
Marshall Jay Lewis of Sedro-Woolley enters Clallam County Superior Court in Port Angeles on Wednesday during his trial on charges of felony first-degree arson and residential burglary, and gross misdemeanor telephone harassment, cyberstalking and disclosing intimate images. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
